Protection
Oh my, I've been plundered! (This guide assumes that you don't have a castle yet and that the plunderer has a lot more military power than you have. It also assumes that you don't have a friend who can quickly send a large army to protect you.) What do I do now? 1. Relax 2. Do not give up 3. Challenge the plunderer 1. Relax The plunderer can hurt you, but he cannot kill you. Details: *Most of your resources and economic power are bound in buildings. He cannot destroy those as long as you have no castle. *You will lose troops, but that is not unusual in Lord of Ultima. Everyone does, this is a game where players fight players. Rebuilding an army after war will happen often. *You can protect your resources. Do not give up *The plunderer can only win this battle for resources if you give up and become inactive. *Details: *To understand the thoughts of the plunderer, we will switch to his perspective.< *The plunderer finds many targets in the Lord-of-Ultima-world: *Second best are wealthy and weakly protected cities of active players. He will have some losses, but since the storage is full, it is still a very profitable deal. *Third type of targets is dungeons. They cause some losses, but overall, they are rewarding for the plunderer. *Everything which is less good than a dungeon usually doesn't get plundered, since there are better targets. This is the category you want your city to be in. Challenge the plunderer You want to be an unattractive target for the plunderer. First goal: Become less attractive than dungeons Second goal: Become completely unprofitable for the plunderer. You need to reduce the amount of resources the plunderer can steal and increase the amount of losses he has: First, build hideouts. Cancel all other build orders. In Lord of Ultima, all resources in your storage AND in your queues can be plundered (the orders will be cancelled, if necessary). You need to keep some of your resources safe, or you will not be able to build or recruit anything. The number and level of course depends on the economy of your city, there is a chart below that can guide you as to how many you might need. Build them close to small forests, which you don't need for wood production, since this will increase their capacity. If necessary, tear down some low level buildings to get the room for the hideouts. Yes, it hurts your economy, but it is necessary. Key to chart: Level is the level of the building (town hall or hideout) in question. TH storage is how many of each resource that level town hall stores, while amount hidden is how much of each resource a hideout of that level hides. The hideouts needed column is how many hideouts (of the same level as the town hall) is needed to hide just the resources stored in the town hall (column 2 of this chart) As the chart demonstrates, keeping 6 hideouts at the same level as your townhall will protect as many resources as your townhall stores from the end of the tutorial (level 4) through level 6. Third, maximize losses for the plunderer. You might think that your few units will not really make any difference, but that is not true. Each killed attacker makes the plunder attack more ineffective not only because it reduces the amount of resources gained by the costs of the dead unit, but also because it takes time to rebuild and slows down the build process of the plunderers army, which he doesn't like. To maximize the losses of the plunderer, you have to upgrade your defense (city wall and towers) and constantly build the best unit to defend. To decide which unit to build, you need to take a look at the plunder report. If he came with Knights primarily, you should choose Guardians or Crossbowmen. If he came with Mages, build Templars or Paladins. If he came with Berserkers, build Rangers. Check the production time of those units. If you can build city guards three times faster, or you don't have those units available because you miss the building, then it's probably better to build plain city guards. Now, after you started to work on becoming less attractive, you should take a closer look at each plunder report you get: Max Loot Calculate or estimate the amount of resources the plunderer could have looted if all of his units got resources. Currently, Knights carry 20, Berserkers 10, Archmages 10 and Mages 5. You can check the other units by looking at their tooltip). Example: Let's assume he came with 1000 Knights, MaxLoot = 20.000 (20 per Knight). Loot Sum up the amount of resources the plunderer looted, and subtract all costs for his losses (currently, a Knight costs 350, a Berserker 150, a Mage 200 and an Archmage 450. You can check other units by looking at their tooltip). Example: Let's assume he stole 15.000 resources and you killed 20 Knights (costs 350 each = 7000 total) means that he gained 8.000 resources overall. You achieved your first goal, to become less attractive than dungeons, if Loot/MaxLoot < 50. Dungeons are currently about 60 to 80. You will see that almost any plunderer will give up at this point since it doesn't make sense anymore. There are better targets out there. In our example, the plunderer gained 40 (8.000 / 20.000), he should turn away from you. If multiple people try to plunder you, things are not much worse. Basically you will inflict less casualties on their side, but they have to share stolen resources which overall makes their trips less effective. Another hint: Usually it is not a good idea to mail the plunderer and tease him, since you don't want this to become something personal. You want him to stop as you have shown him that you are not an easy target. What happens if he still plunders you even though he just loses resources overall? Keep in mind that some plunderers send out many hunting armies each day, and they do not always check every report if it still makes sense to attack someone. It might be a good idea to send him a polite mail which explains that it doesn't make sense to visit you anymore. Maybe it became something personal. The plunderer just continues to hunt you even though it doesn't make sense. At this point, you need to negotiate with other players, e.g. maybe you can trade resources with someone who sends you a support army to defend. 'Note: '(from a plunderer) Chances are if you are recruiting troops from nothing to defend against regular attacks, you will be unable to kill more troops than the plunderer can recruit in the time it takes the troops to walk to and from your city, this in mind try to aquire (through daily quests, bosses, etc) amulets so that you can recruit many troops much more quickly. It should catch them off guard. Category:Gameplay